Ground No One Has Broken
Word Unpacked: Devotionals in Romans
▶ Watch the full devotional:
Romans 15:20-21 (NIV)
It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else's foundation. Rather, as it is written: "Those who were not told about him will see, and those who have not heard will understand."
When we start something new, we usually look for the road that's already built — the safe place, the place where we don't have to prove anything because someone else already has. Paul did the opposite. Near the end of Romans, in the one place he finally talks about himself, he says preaching only where Christ was already known was never his goal. He wanted the places no one had reached yet.
But look at where he starts the story: not with ambition — with grace. Paul had once hunted down Christians. If there was ever ground no one expected the gospel to reach, it was Paul himself, and Christ came there first. That's the only reason Paul could walk anywhere at all.
And walk he did — some 1,400 miles from Jerusalem to Illyricum, through river crossings and robbers on the road, refusing to settle anywhere someone else had already laid a foundation. Not because existing churches didn't matter to him — he kept returning to the ones he'd planted, and longed to visit Rome. Refusing to build on someone else's foundation was never a verdict on anyone's work. It was simply the direction God had given him.
There's a phrase builders use: breaking ground. It means turning over the first shovel of soil on land that's never held a building before. The person who does that doesn't get to see the finished building — not yet. They just see dirt, and the work of clearing it. Paul chose that ground on purpose.
Now look at what he quotes next — an old promise that whoever hadn't been told would see, and whoever hadn't heard would understand. Look closely at who they'll see. It isn't Paul. It's Christ. So Paul wasn't carrying some lonely mission on his own shoulders — he was stepping into a promise God had already made, centuries before he was born. And that promise didn't end with him.
There's ground like that near us today, too — a person who's never really heard who Jesus is, a missionary somewhere breaking ground no one else has reached. We usually avoid ground like that. There's no proof of success there. It feels so much safer to stay where the path is already clear.
That's the turn. But...
